The three person crew of Shenzhou-9 – including the first Chinese woman to fly in space – have successfully conducted the first crewed docking for their country. Docking between their vehicle and the Tiangong-1 module – which has been on orbit since last year – was conducted at around 6:07am UTC on Monday morning.

Chinese Docking:

The approach and docking was very similar to the one seen during Shenzhou-8 last year, an unmanned event that was China’s debut attempt to join the handful of other nations that have the ability to rendezvous and dock vehicles in space.

Shenzhou-8, was launched unmanned on October 31, 2011, via the Long March 2F (Chang Zheng-2F). The main objective of the mission was the dockin